All the King's Horses
by Benet1003
Summary: AU, where Eric succeeds in his suicide attempt. Blaming her mother, Serena disappears, only to be forced to return years later on the tail of another tragedy. NSD, BC
1. Monday's Child

**Title: **All the King's Horses

**Summary: **AU, where Eric succeeds in his suicide attempt. Blaming her mother, Serena disappears, only to be forced to return years later on the tail of another tragedy. NSD, BC

**Rating:** T, for sensitive content (this chapter, especially)

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Gossip Girl and the chapter titles come from nursery rhymes.

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><p><strong>Prologue: <strong>Monday's Child (is Fair of Face)

**September 2007**

**New York, New York**

Serena van der Woodsen has always loved her hair. Even on its worst day, she could always count on her golden locks to pull her back from whatever dark place she'd forced herself into. It was as bright and gleaming and outspoken as she was supposed to be; and to her, that overshadowed the days it could only be tamed by a messy ponytail, and its tendency to draw overt stares from wildly inappropriate older men.

Today, for the first time in seventeen years, she wishes she'd taken after her father or her aunt or her Grandma CeCe; anyone but her mother.

She runs a brush through her blonde waves, carefully pulling them up into a sloppy ponytail. Her mother had asked—via an assistant—that she look presentable today; but even if she'd cared enough about her mother's wishes to honor them, she didn't have the energy or the willpower to manage that this morning.

As she drops the porcelain brush back onto the counter, she catches a glimpse of the invitation half-concealed under a bottle of concealer and a tube of waterproof mascara. As much as she'd like to, she can't pull her attention away from the thin lines of text dirtying the crisp cream card.

_The family asks that you join them for a private gathering on Sunday, September 30__th__, 2011 to help them mourn this incredible loss._

_There will be no funeral._

Even now, reading it for the thousandth time, Serena can feel bile rising in her throat.

_There will be no funeral._

Serena assumed that she wasn't supposed to have seen the invitation that went out to all of Lily and William's "closest and dearest friends", but the assistant was new, and there were over a thousand cards to address and mail. She hadn't missed the one Serena took.

Her father told the appropriate people that Lily was simply too distraught to plan a funeral, and that the family was in no condition to mourn such a private loss so publicly.

It was a mark of the shock that still shrouded high society that no one had protested or even commented. Not that Serena had truly expected them to; they could be cruel, vapid creatures, but they were hardly monsters.

And they had no reason to argue.

They hadn't had to look at the ugly scars corrupting her baby brother's soft cream arms. They hadn't had to come to the sick realization that he'd never heal. They hadn't even had to watch as Lily, William and Serena stood alone in the cemetery and buried Eric.

Their only obligation was make an appearance at the suite sometime on Sunday and eloquently lament on how cruel fate was, and how horrible it was that Eric van der Woodsen had died of a _heart attack_ at the tender age of fifteen.

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><p><strong>Two weeks later.<strong>

The week after her mother married Klaus, she remembers telling a nine-year old version of Eric that she wouldn't be able to survive a single minute without him. Every time she looks at a clock, she remembers that promise and wishes that God had picked a better way to raise her expectations of herself. It's been fifteen days since she was called out of Ben's English class to meet her father in the main office of Nightly. That's over 21600 minutes, and she's never hated being wrong more.

She hasn't left the apartment since the burial, and in fact she hasn't left her bedroom since her mother allowed their suite at the Palace to play host to her twisted calling hours. But she still knows it's been over two weeks, and that her father will leave for Europe soon.

Before all of this, she hadn't seen him since she was four and she knows that had it not have happened, she may have never seen him again. He's been no more of a father than Lily's been a mother—at least she believed that true, until Lily covered up her brother's suicide with a story about an undiagnosed heart condition and intent to sue their family physician. Now, her mother's as dead to her as Eric is to the rest of the world.

She's not stupid enough to think that her father wants her, but she's smart enough to know he's too guilty to tell her "no". But that's really irrelevant, because as she looks around at the pile of never-unpacked bags littering her floor, she realizes that she never planed on asking for his permission.

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><p><strong>Three days later.<strong>

After realizing Serena's intentions, William van der Woodsen had dedicated exactly twenty-six minutes to convincing Serena that New York was the best place for her.

_New York was her home._

_She had friends, family and school in the City._

_Her mother needed her._

He spent another twelve explaining why she'd hate France.

_She didn't speak the language._

_She didn't know the people._

_She'd have to start all over._

They spent three more minutes sitting in silence on the end of the bed before she looked over at her father, brown eyes brimming with tears, and overshadowed all of his excuses with a single refutation:

"She's the reason he's dead."

After that, he simply nodded, patted her awkwardly on the shoulder and said he'd postpone his departure a few days if she wanted more time to decide.

She told him he didn't need to do that and used her last two days in New York to shop and finish packing and to say goodbye.

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><p>She knows that if she'd come home under any other circumstances, things with Blair and Nate would be a mess. As it stands now though, they're okay.<p>

When she tells Blair she's leaving, the brunette pulls her into her arms and doesn't let go until Serena mentions that she's going to Paris and expects her best friend to be en-route the day after school gets out.

Nate's upset too, and she knows him well enough to know that he thought this was their second chance, not their ending. Twisted as it is, she knows she's breaking his heart to save her own. But it means more than he'll ever know that he kept quiet and simply said he'll miss her.

Chuck wasn't there when she stopped to say goodbye, but when she left the Palace to meet her father at the airport, she found a town car courtesy of "_CB_" at the curb, and a full bottle of Tanqueray waiting inside. She wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry, so she simply poured herself a glass, and gave the address to the driver.

She can still feel the buzz now, almost two thousand feet in the air. Aside from William, there's no one else in the first-class cabin; she strongly suspects her father bought it out. It's a much-appreciated gesture, because now she can cry without the added constriction of embarrassment threatening to suffocate her.

The tears fall freely.

She cries for Eric, for the pain he was in before and for the hole in her heart that he left.

She cries for New York and for the loss of the only home she's ever known.

She cries for Blair: new tears for yet another strain on their fragile friendship and old tears for the horrible, horrible thing she did that broke their friendship in the first place.

She cries for Nate, for a love that will forever be both her greatest regret and the closest she's ever come to happiness.

Mostly though, as sits four rows behind her father, flying over the Atlantic and cocooned in despair, she cries for herself. She cries for every mistake she's ever made, for every raw hand she's been dealt, for all of her shortcomings and all of her regrets.

By the time they touch down in Paris, she positive she doesn't have any tears left.

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><p><strong>AN: **Let me start by saying I adore Eric; but this idea's been begging to be written for a few weeks, so I felt like I had to get it down on paper. That said, the next chapter will pick up seven years in the future. Dan, Jenny and Rufus will all be introduced later. R&R.


	2. This is the House that Jack Built

**Title: **All the King's Horses

**Summary: **AU, where Eric succeeds in his suicide attempt. Blaming her mother, Serena disappears, only to be forced to return years later on the tail of another tragedy. NSD, BC

**Rating:** T, for sensitive content

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Gossip Girl and the chapter titles come from nursery rhymes.

**Chapter 1: **This is the House that Jack Built

**July 2014**

**Santorini, Greece**

Serena is barely through the door long enough to put her bag down when a cry of "Rena!" and a thigh-high impact knocks her back outside.

Far from upset, she instantly drops her bags to the ground and pulls her attacker into her arms, murmuring her greeting into the young boy's thick, dark head of hair.

"You're squishing me."

Suddenly sick of the affection she was lavishing on him, he begins to squirm, and Serena lets him go after a final squeeze, laughing lightly as she does so. Her brother is nothing if not fickle.

"You've gotten so big, Niki! What are you, twenty-five now?"

"I'm five!" he cries, indignant. "And you've been gone forever."

"She's been gone four months; and what did I tell you about answering the door, Nikolas van der Woodsen?"

Serena's long past wondering if her father had ever been the same kind of parent to her that he was to her half-brother, and there isn't a trace of bitterness in her smile as she accepts her father's hug.

"You've gotten thin, and it has been too long," William comments after releasing her.

Serena laughs lightly, warming slightly at the familiar greeting and dispelling his concerns with an offhand wave.

"You try living in Sudan for four months; see what it does for your appetite," she offers with a light smirk, as she walks back into the villa and looks around.

Banter aside, it really does feel like she'd been gone forever; she's happy to see that not much had changed since March. The four-bedroom villa seems to be exactly as she left it. The furniture is the same mix of modern European design and traditional Greek influence. The kitchen is disheveled, in a nice, lived-in way she'd been unfamiliar with until her father had remarried. Even the pictures dotting the walls—a mix of her own original prints and pictures of the family—are the same.

Peeking into one of the upstairs bedrooms, she's a little disheartened to find it showed no evidence of being occupied. "Pete is still in Paris?"

"Yeah," her father calls back, still in the living room. "He's actually closing the apartment up for good."

"Finally."

She and her father had moved to Santorini six years before, the summer she'd gotten to Paris. He'd been asked to do some clinical work on the island and after much discussion, they both decided a vacation was in order.

Marina was born in Santorini, lived in Athens, and had returned to the island with her two children, Tasia and Petros for the summer. William met them when she collapsed at a restaurant and was brought into his clinic, and what was supposed to be a summer turned into a second marriage and a new family.

William bought the five of them a comfortable house in Athens and a villa for summers in Santorini and Nikki followed just a few weeks after they were settled in. In all the commotion, William decided it would be easier to just let his old apartment be. Serena had used it while she was working on her degree in Paris, but she'd graduated almost two years before. It's sat empty since, and her stepbrother had taken it upon himself to refurbish and sell the property earlier that year.

She'd been under the impression that he'd be back by the time she arrived though.

"When will he be back?" 

"Within the next few days. He just wants to make sure the buyers are set before he comes back."

Her answer came not from her father, but from an over-excited, lightly accented, feminine voice coming from across the hall.

"I thought you were staying in Athens for the summer," Serena squeals, unable to contain her mirth as she crosses the hall and darts into the bedroom she shares with her stepsister.

Petros was three years older than her, six inches taller and studied Economics in Athens. He played rugby until he started studying at Pantieon, and he was never without a girlfriend.

Tasia was his polar opposite. She was three years younger than her brother and two weeks younger than Serena. Where Petros was amiable, Tasia was shy to the point of social awkwardness. She was tiny and thin and pretty in a way that was so unobtrusive it was almost unfamiliar.

She finds her standing on the veranda and doesn't hesitate before pulling her into an excited hug. "Seriously, T. What are you doing here?"

"Don't take this the wrong way, but I've seen you three times since you took the staff photographer position; the last time was at my aunt's funeral."

Serena's previous exuberance is replaced with a visible guilt, and noticing the change in her sister's attitude, Tasia laughs softly.

"No, I'm _proud of you_, Serena. But I do miss you, and figured that I should probably take advantage of you while I can."

She pauses for a second, rolling her eyes at Serena's still-guilty expression, and moves back in towards the interior of the villa.

"Seriously though, how was the grand safari?"

"A pain," Serena admits lightly in response to her stepmother's question. "Getting any communication in or out was practically impossible, which was a bigger problem than it usually is because our editors didn't tell us exactly what they wanted before we left. But I did get a few really nice shots."

"And?"

Serena bites her lip in an uncharacteristic display of modesty that only piques her family's curiosity. "I think they're going to run one on the cover of the September magazine," she reveals, with a soft smile. "Which at the very least, means I should get some time off!"

"Mark promised her at least until the end of the month," Tasia adds with a soft laugh, answering her stepmother's question as she helped herself to Serena's glass of wine.

As she reaches over to playfully swat her hand, she feels her cell buzzing in her pocket. Pulling it out, her brown furrows in confusion as she checks the ID. It's a New York number, but not one she recognizes.

"I've got to take this," she announces to the table at large, sliding her chair back and heading for the door.

"Serena van der Woodsen," she answers, just as she pulls open the door and finds herself accosted by the warm, Grecian breeze. There are few things she loves more than the feel of the salty, soft air waxing and waning around her; it never fails to bring a smile to her face.

The voice on the other end of the line though, manages to purge her any elation instantaneously.

"_Serena? It's Nate. Nate Archibald."_

"I'm sorry. What do you mean you have to go? You said you were off until August." Tasia's pacing the room, alternating between muttering in Greek and hurling an incessant stream of questions at her stepsister.

"Our New York staff photographer has," pausing for a second as she tried to formulate an answer, she catches sight of her immunization paperwork, "TB. He's in the hospital, and Mark needs someone he trusts to cover news in the States for awhile."

It wasn't her best lie, but she figures it will do. Tasia had never left Greece and to say her knowledge of contagious diseases is limited would be an understatement.

"Can't you say 'no'? You said it yourself: he pulled you out of vacation early to send you on that last assignment. There has to be someone else."

Elbow deep in the oak trunk that held her seriously diminished collection of "New York appropriate" clothes, Serena sighs. Her father and stepmother had been disappointed. Niki had been upset, but easily distracted by the gifts Serena presented him with from her trip. Only her sister was giving her a hard time about this, and the very worst part was that Serena knows exactly what she needs to do to appease her. She simply doesn't want to do it.

Turning around and taking in the utter ire that was currently defining Tasia, she also knows she doesn't have much of a choice.

"It's not a big deal," she mutters, slamming the door to the trunk shut and dejectedly concluding that her couture collection was decidedly circa 2007. "It's only for a few days and it'll give me a chance to see Blair and my mom."

Just as anticipated, that stopped any forthcoming comments in their tracks. There was nothing that made Tasia more uncomfortable than talking about Lily van der Woodsen.

She knew what had happened via William, Serena assumed; but the only time Serena had spoken a word about Lily was three years before, when a pile of mail that had never made it from Paris had wound up in the kitchen table.

Serena still had a strong suspicion that her father had purposely not had them forwarded, but that didn't make the wedding announcement or the two birth announcements hurt any less.

Tasia had tried to ask about it later; Serena threw an absolute fit, walked out and disappeared hadn't come home for a week and a half.

"Well, tell Blair I said 'hi'," she murmurs eventually, watching forlornly as Serena throws a few more choice pieces into her bag and zips it up. "Do you really have to leave tonight?"

"I do," Serena confirms, stopping for a second. She's always surprised by the feelings of utter _despair _that plague her every time she has to leave, and this time is no different. "But it's New York. I'm not going to be incommunicado this time," she promises.

Serena takes Tasia's nod as permission to head downstairs, sighing dejectedly as she grabs her camera bag and her suitcase and moves down the stairs.

Her father and Marina are waiting for her in the living room; Niki is already in bed, and she's grateful for that small blessing. Looking into a pair of blue eyes that perfectly mirror her own and seeing the sadness etched across his face is decidedly the worst part of leaving.

"I'll be back soon," she swears in between questions, tears and fierce hugs.

"You be good," William says finally, pulling her close to him. "Call if you need anything."

She understands what he's really saying and responds in kind, softly remarking that New York is a big city before sighing one last time and walking out the door.

"Mr. DeMarcus? This is Serena van der Woodsen. I received a call from Nathanial Archibald earlier this evening; he said I needed to call you immediately."

The voice on the other end of the line is hoarse, and it takes Serena a second to realize she'd probably woken him up. She'd had to travel through the night to get to airport in Athens, and it was almost ten o'clock there. That meant it was pushing three in New York and she'd most certainly pulled him from his bed.

All things considered, he seemed to figure out who she was family quickly.

"Did Mr. Archibald tell you what this was about, Ms. van der Woodsen?"

"No," Serena answers, panic tinting her voice. "He said he was calling on behalf of your law firm and asked that I book a flight to New York and immediately get in contact with you. What's going on?"

"Ms. van der Woodsen, Serena," for the first time Serena takes note of his sad, reluctant, tone. Panic followed her revelation as she waited for him to continue. "I hate to be the one to tell you this, but there's been an accident."

**A/N: **Just in case you were wondering, Serena's dad's new family isn't going to be featured prominently. But they may be mentioned, so just to clarify: Marina is William's new wife. She had two children from a previous relationship Petros (Pete) and Anastasia (Tasia). Marina and William have one child together, Nikolas (Niki). Next chapter, we get to NYC. R&R.


End file.
